Question time in Oldham Data profiling is helping Oldham police analyse the work of its community support officers

Sally Flood

The introduction of community support police officers (CSOs) in 2003 was greeted with controversy. Critics argued that the new officers cost almost as much as fully-qualified police officers but had only a fraction of their power and training. The government, however, saw CSOs as a highly visible and effective tool in addressing anti-social behaviour and petty crime.

The Guardian, March 16, 2005

V

Airport and station get walk-in nhs centres

David Brindle

The first generation of walk-in centres for NHS care will include pilot schemes at Manchester airport and Birmingham New Street station, it will be announced today. The schemes will be among almost 20 unveiled by Frank Dobson, health secretary, in a rebuff to doctors’ leaders who last week came out against the centres on the grounds that they would undermine the GP’s traditional role.

By choosing an airport and a station among the first sites, ministers are also issuing a challenge to private walk-in medical centres that have sprouted at such locations.

The centres will be open 7am - 10pm on weekdays, and at times during weekends, to provide free information and minor treatment by doctors and nurses.

The Guardian, July 16, 1999

VI

People's peers take back seat in the Lords

Matthew Tempest

One in three of the so-called “people’s peers” have only spoken once in the House of Lords since being appointed a year ago – and that was to deliver their maiden discoursees.

New research by the Daily Mirror reveals that two of the new peers have never voted, and all of them have missed more than half of the past 62 votes.

The poor record of the 11 men and four women, who were the first peers to apply for their posts, comes as a further embarrassment following the public relations debacle that greeted their appointment a year ago. The new peers were initially dubbed people’s peers, as applicants could nominate themselves for the job, which pays up to £234 expenses a day.

The Guardian, April 26, 2002

VII

Not off to uni? What an excellent idea...

Most teenagers seem to go on to higher education now, but when James Delingpole reluctantly decided his stepson Jim wasn’t university material, he encouraged him

to find a job instead. A year later, the gamble has paid off…

James Delingpole

When, this time last year, I wrote in these pages that I was strongly discouraging my bright, well-educated, but academically useless teenage stepson, Jim, from going to university, I was quite disappointed by the response. I’d been hoping for lots of angry letters accusing me of being a cruel thwarter of youthful ambitions. Instead, I got an almost unanimous thumbs-up.

The Daily Telegraph, January 21, 2005